sea water
by the nilla wafer
Summary: RxS Once upon a time, Sora had an idea. And in case any of you dear, dear readers are inherently unaware, Sora having an idea is never, ever a good thing.


_**Disclaimer**: I don't own shit._

_P.S. Heyo! It's been a while, yeah?_

_Inspired by summer and mojitos with the neighbors._

**sea water**

**ch 1: of swimming and swinging**

Our story begins exactly three days ago on a bright, slightly-muggy, eighty-five degree day on the old brown cobblestone streets of Destiny Islands' marketplace. Mothers bustled about with herds of children and shopping baskets, old folks with mismatched coffee mugs chatted over rustic cafe patio tables, and teenagers sashayed around the cracks in the cobblestone—swinging their bags of novelty clothing purchases while chattering on their teeny-tiny cell phones about school and boys and girls and beer and parents and band tees. Sora Hikari was somewhere in the middle of those different crowds, limbs splayed out on a park bench next to a coconut-bearing palm tree. The sun was bright, the clouds were absent, and the honey sweet smell of the flowers in the chatter-filled breeze made the day absolutely, unequivocally, downright perfect. Except for one thing.

Sora Hikari wanted to go swimming, and Riku Kage did not.

Now, this was nothing new. As it had become a common occurrence throughout recent stages of Sora and Riku's friendship (Riku not wanting to partake in activities with Sora, that is), Sora had learned to accept that Riku was a stubborn ass and had decidedly altered his friendly invitations as such. But that day was not a normal day and for some unexplainable reason (which Sora would discover exactly one day later) he really wanted to go swimming with Riku.

So, after a long hour and a half of lazing all over a park bench in the middle of Destiny Island's most popular marketplace and contemplating the consequences of dragging Riku to the beach, ignorance won over compliance and Sora leaped off of the bench, slammed his bright yellow sneakers into the cobblestone and bounded down the busy streets of Destiny Islands towards Riku's house.

* * *

Riku shifted his weight from his left side to his right, half rolling over in the paopu-patterned blue hammock in his picket-fenced, vegetative backyard. His eyes had long since glazed over the book he was reading—an old, blue coffee stained book with taped binding lying halfway beneath his arm—and he was slowly but surely falling asleep. The leaves of the two plump, eight-foot palm trees the hammock was attached to swayed gently in the breeze, the ocean bubbled at the edges of the grass green yard five feet away, and somewhere off in the distance a little yellow bird sang its honey sweet song of summer and sunshine and happiness and bird babies. Riku's day was absolutely, unequivocally, downright perfect.

Until Sora showed up.

Sora stampeded through the path along Riku's canary yellow house to the backyard, the dandelions and tiny purple flowers he squished grieving in submission along the way. His red Etnies tee swished and fluttered on his back as he ran, and his eyes watered at the sudden sting of salty air from the ocean. But to that he paid no mind and continued on his rambunctious way towards the spot where Riku could always, always be found: passed out in the hammock.

Sora jumped the last three feet towards the hammock, flailed his arms, latched onto the opposite side and flipped it over, sending Riku flying off the side and Sora hanging upside down in a giggling mass. The book landed somewhere off in the distance under a bush, and Riku on his ass.

"What the FUCK, Sora!"

Sora only continued to swing back and forth and giggle, his upside-down smile turning into a full blown, shit-eating grin.

"I'm serious! Jesus—fuck, Sora! Christ I'm just—fuck! What the—god—mother—" Riku growled and yanked a twig from his short ponytail.

Sora continued to giggle.

"What the FUCK makes you think you can fucking—god—fuck—dammit, Sora! Motherfu—"

"...you swear a lot, Riiiku."

"Oh, JESUS!"

In a graphic display of rage and fury, Riku clambered to his shoeless feet, balled his fists, swung his arms and stalked towards the hammock and the still upside-down Sora. In one fluid movement he crouched down, reeled back and shoved the side of the hammock skyward, sending Sora soaring four feet off of the hammock into the same flowering bush the book landed under. Sora landed with a 'thud' and looked up and blinked his eyes, giggles effectively squashed. He stared at Riku. Riku glared at Sora.

The blue, paopu-patterned hammock swung gently in the breeze.

"So, wanna go swimming?"

"Fuck, no!" Riku cried and stomped towards the bush, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "You think I want to go swimming now? Maybe earlier, yeah but that was before you FUCKED UP MY GODDAMNED SHIT, Sora!"

Sora frowned, his ocean blue eyes taking form reminiscent of a scorned puppy dog's. Riku crossed his arms.

"So... you don't want to go swimming...?"

"Jesus... NO!" He swiped up his crappy book, spun around on his heels, stalked towards the house, flung open the screen door, stalked some more, and slammed the door shut behind him.

Sora stared at the door. The door did not stare back.

Now, let it be known that that sort of event was no longer an uncommon occurrence. Before Riku had gone off to college, it was always all fun and games. The boys were boys, laughing and swatting at each other with wooden sticks and paintball guns and soccer balls and Lord knows what else, frolicking back and forth across the sandy white beaches of the tiny play island not far from the coast behind Riku's house. But ever since Riku came back from college, Sora thought, Riku had been... weird.

Not weird as in 'creepy' weird, like the sort of weird one might perceive from a pink pajama-covered rolling pin-wielding-ex-con kind of way, but the kind of weird that was just... well, weird. Riku never wanted to play games any more, never wanted to hang out with Sora and skip rocks on the ocean or chase each other around the play island with potentially dangerous (and sometimes mechanical) objects. He never wanted to chat, never wanted to go get ice cream, and certainly never wanted to go down to the marketplace. All he really ever wanted to do was read.

And for a while, Sora was okay with that. He suspected that he would probably do the same when he would return from his freshman year of college, so he simply accepted Riku's odd behavior and chalked it up to moodiness and a year full of too much alcohol. At first.

Now they were a month into summer, and Sora was getting antsy. Tidus and Selphie were cool and all, but they weren't as funny as Riku was—well, used to be. And he could only take so much of Kairi. Every other time they hung out it was like she expected something of him. Ice cream socials, movie nights, two-person barbeques, walks on the beach after curfew—it was fun and all but if he didn't know better, he'd think she liked him. Like... 'like' liked him. And, of course... Sora 'knew' better. They'd been friends forever, and besides—where was the fun in dating someone you knew already?

So Sora pried himself off of the bush and sat himself down in the grass. He looked over at the bush—the previously flowering, now destroyed and mangled bush—and slowly but surely, his confused gaze moved from the bush up and over to the far left, second story window blue curtains of Riku's canary yellow house. Shut.

It that moment, something occurred to him. And he did a very un-honey sweet, very equivocal, and very, very un-downright Sora thing to do:

He got up and walked away.

And Riku watched him go.

* * *

_R&R!_


End file.
